Geography – Page 45

Second Wednesday in Lent

In Response to

a reflection on God’s Promise given to Sarai and Abraham: descendants, and their new God-given names:

3 questions

1. What does this encounter-renaming-promise-of-blessing have to do with us today, in a pandemic wherein so many people are Querdenkers (reality deniers – eg ‘I’m done with this Covid!’) in order to get by, or are sinking, sinking into despair, addiction, abuse, cruelty, or being overwhelmed as the demands to be creative cannot be even begun with.

2. It is said in various and many ways ‘old age is a dry or fruitless time of life.’ Can those in this time of life at all agree: yes physically and mentally ‘little deaths’ rear their ugly heads and steal bits of us from us*DOCH Is this not the most fruitful time of life when the wisdom that one has discovered as a teen and onward start to be proven as wisdom indeed? Is this not the time of life when the penultimate things (and the even less important things) of life recede into the background and the ultimate takes not only front and centre stage, but inspires one to see how God is present (as sacramental as ever) in the mundane and simple … the ordinarily super-beautiful small things**

* – Let’s not talk about the GERDS or sciatica that disturb my rest! or the looming cancer – So I can no longer sit to read and write, doch now I can stand at a new (creatively crafted from coffee cans and plywood) makeshift desk to type and read.

** Quickly given examples: pine cones shredded by a squirrel scattered beneath a tree – evidence that in the -35⁰ temperatures God provides also for these little creatures, or the sunsets and sunrises that shower specular light everywhere transforming the dull into the means of Grace (on par with God sanctifying sinners with God’s most marvellous glory), or the northern lights of greens and purples dancing across the cold sky of infinite stars sending light from millions of years ago?

3. Is the so ordinary, familiar Lenten reflection provided on Abram and Sarai’s encounter with God, the advanced years of both, the promise of children numerous, the laughter … is this a reflection that while this time may seem so unique and demanding for us, for God it is ordinary, already many times having occurred, and it can be taken by us simply ‘in the flow’ of God’s promises and presence.

Which reminds me of the story of the rabbi who refused to join the council of the synagogue. Pressed he relented (seasonally appropriate) and agreed he would join, but he would attend only when there was something new to deal with. Something ‘new’ arises, they seek his attendance, he points out that this ‘new’ thing is addressed in the writings of this or that revered rabbi. Another ‘new’ thing arises … and it repeats many times. Each time the rabbi shows that the ‘new’ thing is rather ‘old’. The rabbi is not required ever to attend council.

— Doch, God does do new things with us, as Abram and Sarai are given new names (new essence, new identity by God) as Abraham and Sarah.

God does wonderfully new things in order that we will recognize who we are, who God is, and God’s enduring attitude of Grace toward us and all creation. It is the same old, old story of Jesus and his love.

Which is always new when it is shared as Grace and hope in love.

Equality Is Not Possible Through Revenge

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

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God Created All Equally Favoured.

We can be courageous to live so, today!

Genesis 2:18

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’

John 19:26-27

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

Words of Grace For Today

There is something very wrong with this creation account in Genesis. How it has been used makes this very clear to anyone who wishes to pay attention.

While humans are both female and male, the story places one as the first consideration for God, and the other as an after-thought, a help mate for the first.

This story came out of a male biased culture and has been used to devalue females as second class humans. Abuses have abounded through history based solely on this false preference of God’s for males. These biases and their subsequent abuses used to seem so acceptable to some people, especially those that benefited from them. In truth they always have been an abomination for the whole species.

Today, as if this helps at all, many have turned these biases and abuses on their heads. Females are given free license to devalue, abuse, lie about, gaslight, and even kill males freely, as if it were their birthright as females. This ‘new’ bias-abuse of males can never set right the bias-abuse of females. In fact it is worse. For many the bias-abuse of females was unintentional, even by females who saw it as something for their benefit.

The ‘new’ (to our culture) bias-abuse of males to benefit females cannot be claimed by any to be participated in unawares. It is the flip of a terrible bias in history. For that matter continuing male-favouring biases is no longer excusable (because one was unawares) either, if it ever was.

A bias participated in aware of the bias and one’s participation in it is worse than an accidental bias in that it , on top of everything else, consciously chosen.

Female favouring biases are also most often pursued with revenge in mind. For example it is as if the abuse is pursued against this good male to take revenge for the abuse of other abusive males, even though the males are related only in that they are males.

That kind of blind revenge bias is many measures worse. It claims to set things right, yet it adds layer upon layer of lies and deception and damage to every situation.

Only Grace brings us to live past bias of any kind.

Jesus, on the cross, does not change that woman have next to no possibility to ‘take care of their own business.’ They require a man to own the property and from that provide for the woman. Instead Jesus acknowledges the disadvantage this places upon Mary, his mother, and he ensures that one of the disciples is now recognized by Mary as her son, and she is recognized by him as her mother.

Jesus does not remove the bias. Instead he ensures, despite the bias, that his followers and his mother are cared for as all people should be.

We can make changes, if all too slowly, to cultural biases. We need to do this with great courage and persistence. We need to work to remove the bias and all vestiges from our own lives. We need to actually remove and end the bias, not to merely replace it with an equally if not worse bias!

As we recognize our own sin (including biases), and the sin of our culture’s biases, we need swiftly and effectively mitigate the suffering all our biases cause people, including ourselves. We need to provide the care every human deserves for everyone we can.

This is the meaning of life, and the purpose of each day; to provide God’s Grace to all people.

For this we can live grateful lives.

Can We Sinners Live Wisely and Gently?

Tuesday, March 2, 2021

In the Darkness of Sin,

We May Not Know How to Live Well!

Sanctified, We Can Learn to Live

Wisely and Gently

As the Holy Spirit Guides Us.

Psalm 119:66

Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.

James 3:13

Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

Words of Grace For Today

After we recognize our own hopeless sinfulness, which God redeems at great cost, forgiving us and renewing life in us, and that we need God’s forgiveness constantly, for we simply cannot stop sinning, then the question is how are we going to live?

The measure we humans have held up returns us right back into works righteousness, as if God suddenly has made us able not to sin, so that we must preform or lose God’s favour and blessings. These two passages certainly could be interpreted that way … making it easy for us to dismiss them.

There is more to it than that.

Once sanctified (made saints by God), though we continue to sin, God pulls out of us great works that further God’s will and work on earth among humans and for creation. Most simply put, God’s willa and work is that God’s Grace is demonstrated to more and more people, and more and more people embrace the cross as God’s demonstration of God’s love for all people; forgiveness, redemption and new life is for everyone. We can live to cooperate with God’s will, or we can constantly choose to defy God’s will and live as if God does not exist, has not created us, does not forgive, redeem and renew us, and as if we can go it alone.

We can go it alone … right to our own damnation, choosing to separate ourselves from God. God still comes to us, forgives us, redeems us, renews us … except at some point God allows us to have our way … and the hell we have created for ourselves is the hell we live forever. At what point this happens is not anything we can know. But that it happens we can know: we can choose to deny God’s good work in us.

How else can we live? There are options that God makes possible for us. Wisdom is one of them.

We can pray: Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I believe in your commandments.

We can live each day so that our God-given wisdom and understanding is evident in our works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

These passages then speak to how we can pursue wisdom in our daily lives, not to our own benefit, but to the benefit of everyone around us. They speak of our penultimate striving that God make possible for us.

God’s Story for Us is Never Complete

Monday, March 1, 2021

The End of Our Story or

God’s Beginning

Of the Rest of Our Lives?

Genesis 37:14

So Israel said to Joseph, ‘Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word back to me.’ So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.

Philippians 2:4

Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Words of Grace For Today

Israel sends Joseph.

That begins Joseph’s story of betrayal, slavery, advancement, a woman’s false charges, jail, interpreting dreams, and rising to Pharaoh’s most senior man … able then to rescue his family (including the brothers who betrayed him) from famine, which then results in Joseph’s descendants being enslaved by the Egyptians and God’s delivering the people, bringing them into the Promised Land. This story of deliverance will be retold generation after generation as the basis of God’s relationship with God’s chosen people.

When we think that our enemies have done us in, God uses all circumstances (especially our great disaster) to bring about witness and long-lived stories of God’s Graceful Deliverance of so many people.

God’s guide for us comes in many various words and ways. Paul relates a few of them to the Philippians: Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.

Let us live wondrously filled with trust in God’s deliverance, for God walks with us through all circumstances. We need not look after our own interests. We receive life and breath that we may look after others’ interests.

God’s Wonders Keep Us In Life, No Matter What Comes Our Way

Sunday, February 28, 2021

God is with Us

Always

Though we Despair,

Nothing Can Separate Us From God’s Blessings and Joy.

Isaiah 43:5

Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you.

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

Words of Grace For Today

God promises us no easy or comfortable life. God promises us, though, when life is horrendously challenging, we need not fear what may come our way: We need not fear.

Some people somehow learn not to panic in the most stressful situations, though we all have our limits. There are things that drive everyone of us over the bend, and into such distress that we cannot see our way forward.

Life with Christ as our guide, though, need never leave us in doubt; God accompanies us, and when we stray, God gathers us and our offspring in from all the corners where we have strayed and been scattered like dandelion seeds in the winds of summer thunderstorms. Life can be rough, so rough that it will easily appear to do us in.

God promises us we need not fear that such misadventure will do us in. Paul puts it well: We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

God calls us to be saints, the people who reflect Christ’s light to all the world. As we work to bring to light the wonders of God’s miracles among us, there will be no end of challenges that we will face, that will tempt us, and that will do us in, except God finds us, delivers us, and sets us right again, to breathe for yet another day of service.

Light and easy our lives may not be, though accompanied by God we can trust we will endure everything that comes our way. Knowing God’s promises are sure, we need not panic. Not because we are so great or practised or immune. We need not panic because God guards our hearts and minds and strength with God’s own strength. Life for us never ceases to amaze or challenge or inspire.

Breathe. God’s spirit enters us, cleanses us, and inspires us.

Breathe. All will be well. All will be well. All manners of things will be well.

Challenges, Darkness, Light

Saturday, February 27, 2021

Light

Let Us Be Light

For Those In Dark.

Deuteronomy 32:11

As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young; as it spreads its wings, takes them up, and bears them aloft on its pinions, so the Lord alone guided him.

Philippians 4:7

May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Words of Grace For Today

The challenges we face everyday are not inconsequential.

On our own the Devil always gets us and has his way with us.

God does not abandon us.

Like an eagle providing care for it’s young, God looks after us. Like a loving parent God guides us all our days.

We need not panic, or lose heart, for the peace of God surpasses all understanding, guards our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, and guides us to be saints, the people of Christ’s light, Christ’s Grace, God’s love for all we encounter.

God’s peace is everything we need for this day, for each day … one day at a time.

Breathe, Relax, Choose, Do the Saints’ Work

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Relax, Breathe,

No Matter the Path We Choose,

Nothing Can Separate Us From God’s Love.

2 Samuel 22:3

My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my saviour; you save me from violence.

Romans 8:38-39

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Words of Grace For Today

Covid 19 has brought many of the challenges to abundant living to the fore, making it impossible to ignore them. Poor care in (only some) senior care facilities, the real costs of homelessness (which we used to minimize by large social housing projects which were stopped decades ago, resulted in large homeless populations nearly everywhere, which we are only recently addressing and saving money doing so!), the huge percentage of our populations who have absorbed as the basis of their ‘rational’ thinking ‘Querdenken’, false-news, science-deniers, and wild conspiracy theories, which has fed racist and minority focused hate – this is possible since the powers that be have long since used propaganda, and all the above to rationalize their corrupt agendas and to remain in power. Fear mongering by politicians and power brokers and even courts has long term costs for a society and we are paying for it now, again, and will be for decades.

While the stress of isolation taxes each person’s resilience, the first step in responding to each new wave of stress is to relax. It is in fact the only healthy thing we can choose to do in the face of overwhelming stress.

Breathe.

Breathe deeply and slowly.

Breathe in the Holy Spirit’s presence to be in us. Allow it to cleanse and renew each fibre of our being.

Breathe out the effects of all evil and stress.

Breathe in deeply and slowly. Breathe out every source of stress.

Then we can remember who our rock and salvation is. Then we can remember the words of Paul which have sustained generations of God’s people:

Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So assured, again, that God is with and for us, loving us, now we can return to providing that same unconditional love to those in need around us. We can start addressing, one by one, the ills of our society that Covid 19 has made more obvious. We can in fact bring an end to chronic homelessness. We can in fact provide better value (pay) for essential workers, and less for overpaid un-essential leeches on our society, like money brokers and stock market manipulators. We can ensure all people receive respect and care. We can deal with violence (physical and psychological) against all people by anyone, not just against women by men. We can begin to deal with the many who use religion to accumulate power for themselves, to hide their abuse of others, and to perpetrate violence against anyone who stands up to them. We have more than enough ‘wolves hiding in sheep’s clothing’ in our congregations. We can begin to deal with Querdenken and raw hatred based on religion, ethnicity, gender or any other measure by speaking truth, and protecting those who speak truth for us.

And we can begin and end each day thanking God: My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold and my refuge, my saviour; you save me from violence.

Blessings Are Challenging

Monday, February 22, 2021

Streams Like This Have Flowed Since Earliest Times

Just as God’s Blessings and Wisdom Have Flowed

Even in Difficult Times.

They Flow to Us in Our Traditions.

1 Samuel 1:11

Hannah made this vow: ‘O Lord of hosts, if only you will look on the misery of your servant, and remember me, and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a male child, then I will set him before you as a Nazirite until the day of his death. He shall drink neither wine nor intoxicants, and no razor shall touch his head.’

Luke 1:46-48

Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed’

Words of Grace For Today

Hannah is barren, unable to have children. Her husband shows her great favour, loves her deeply. But her husband’s second wife (who has borne him many children) persecutes Hannah because she is barren. Like faithful people of every age, Hannah turns to God and prays for a son, and vows in exchange for a son she will offer him to serve God, raised in the temple by a priest.

Out of Hannah’s suffering, her vow bartering with God, and God’s Grace, God gave us Samuel, a faithful servant of God who anointed and guided kings and rulers of Israel through his lifetime, including a king no less than David.

Out of our suffering God works wonders to bring about great things, greater than we could have imagined possible.

Mary, mother of Jesus, recognizes the blessings God bestows on her, as she is chosen to bear God’s own Son, giving him life in this world as one of us. Mary is remembered as blessed, all these many generations later. She will be as long as Jesus is remembered, which we trust will be for as long as humans live. That is a great honour, an honour that God bestows on a young woman, really barely a woman. A young woman caught in the poverty of a backwater eddy of life’s flow through Israel’s history and geography, Nazareth.

The blessings come at a huge cost to Mary. She will be shunned as a pregnant girl not yet married. Joseph in marrying her will take on her shame as well. Together they will struggle in poverty, and when Herod catches wind that there is a king born among the children around Bethlehem, they will have to run for their lives to Egypt. Herod will slaughter all the children of Jesus’ age in the area. That is just the beginning of Mary’s sufferings which continue until Mary will see her own son accused, condemned and tortuously crucified for crimes he did not commit.

There is no end of heartache for Mary, and we remember her for that, and for God blessing her.

When God blesses us, there is hardly any guarantee or example in our faith stories that this will mean we will live a ‘normal’ life, a comfortable life, a life of anything less than one filled with huge challenges.

We think we suffer greatly in this time of Covid 19. There have been many, much worse pandemics before. The church, and individual Christians in it, have been persecuted much worst many times over in our history. Now as then we are forced to be creative. Life is not as comfortable as before. We have to learn to be practical in entirely new ways. We have to learn to worship in new ways.

Along the way we see how little some leaders have valued the long-and-hard-won traditions we have inherited. Instead, feeling this is the first time anyone has faced any challenges as God’s faithful people, leaders are making up new words. Were those words profound and as meaningful as the words our ancestors of faith had written, edited, and refined through so many ‘difficult times’ that would be one thing. Unfortunately many of these words end up merely as trite and pithy as mass marketed greeting cards.

Our traditions are not weak, nor wrong, nor set in stone. They exist for us to tap, to adapt, and from which to create new and continuing traditions from.

That requires a deep and broad knowledge of our history and traditions, a profound wisdom about faith and the world, and a great humility that allows an ongoing confession of one’s own and our collective sins, from which God saves us again and again.

We pray (with no first born to offer to God in barter) that God will give us all we need, so that we will not set to ruin the church that we have inherited, the faith that we live in, and the awareness of God’s presence among us … especially in difficult times such as these with which Covid 19 presents us.

We pray, God save us. God guide us. God help us mourn what is lost. God help us rejoice at what is left. God help us celebrate what is new to us again, as it was to many who have gone before us.

Striving Onward to ‘Greatness’?

Sunday, February 21, 2021

Every Living Thing Strives and Grows,

Trees Were Once Seedlings And Before That Mere Seeds In Pine Cones

Up to Be More Than They Started Out To Be

Psalm 102:26

They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away.

1 Corinthians 1:8

He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Words of Grace For Today

We humans strive.

It’s built into our DNA, that we strive.

We strive to provide the necessities of life for ourselves and those we are responsible for and those we are responsible to.

When we no longer need to strive to provide the necessities of life we continue to strive, to make life more, to make life easier, to make life more comfortable, to make life more secure.

Our striving requires that we persevere through even the apparently most unendurable circumstances in order that we can hope that we will emerge successful.

Our common, built into our DNA, sin is that in our striving we think highly of ourselves, and with our successes when we strive, we think even more highly of ourselves. This assessment of ourselves provides us a base, even if totally falsified, from which we operate with boldness, sometimes raw foolish boldness, to achieve what we strive for.

Besides falsely assessing ourselves, we falsely assess other people. We think less of them. If they have not achieved with their striving as much as we have (measured by what we have striven for) we devalue them. This gives us a greater assessment possibility for ourselves. If they have achieved more than we have (measured by what we have striven for) then we devalue their achievements in order to give us a greater hope of matching and surpassing their achievements.

The most deceptive part of our striving is that we also devalue God, the ultimate power, creator, and judge of us all, in order that we can move forward in our own ways (measured only by our own standards of what is acceptable and what is not). We throw off the inconvenient truth about the ethical value of our strivings, methods, and accomplishments. It is simply a drag on our confidence. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we are capable of god-like achievements, that we have out-paced other humans, that we have stepped above the rest, and even that God must be dead because we can achieve enough on our own to be able to prove that God cannot exist if God ever did.

Ah, yes, we become godlets to ourselves and those around us who worship us.

Until God changes us like clothing, and we pass away into oblivion.

To avoid such a terrible end, an end of the same kind of nothingness we’ve actually achieved with our lives founded on the sinking sands of deception, we know we must turn to God, confess our sins, and worship God. Thus we may remember who we actually are; mere creatures of God’s making.

We know we must pray (or when we are so lost we no longer remember to pray we need others to pray for us): strengthen us to the end, so that we may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We know on our own we can strive all our lives long and achieve nothing worth anything. With Christ Jesus our Lord graciously forgiving us, redeeming us, and renewing us, there is no limit what God can accomplish in us, with us, and through us.

Always wretched sinners, simultaneously God-made saints, our lives lack nothing. Compared to the highest roller coaster ride, our lives require that we ‘hold on to our hearts, minds, and souls (and soles)’. There is never a dull moment. God walks with us, and moves us to places, events and endurance we could never imagine possible.

Hang on, here we go!

Sheep of a Not Good Kind

Saturday, February 20, 2021

As of Old,

God’s Magnificence is Very Present

and God’s Love Redeems Us

When We Are Lost and Cantankerous.

Isaiah 63:9

It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Luke 15:5

When he has found [the lost sheep], he lays [the reckless, cantankerous, wandering-into-danger sheep] on his shoulders and rejoices.

Words of Grace For Today

Today so many people make up their religion from what they find available around them, as if it were all on a smorgasbord, all-you-can-eat for one small price.

They pick a little of this, and little of that, pile into their lives and try to make it through the day. Their smorgasbord is not certified or health inspected, nor governed by any safety measures. It contains delicious looking poisons, some that work fast, some that work slow, some that only work as death approaches from some other cause.

I met an older man when I was on 4 different medications and a regular injections just to make it through the day. He told me his story when he saw me take one pill. Years before he had a small health problem, went to the doctor and was prescribed a powerful medicine to deal with the issue. Then after months he developed a more serious issue, went to the same doctor and again received a script for medication to deal with that issue. In a few months he had three other rather debilitating issues including that he could not sleep through the night. More medications and a referral to a sleep clinic and thousands of dollars later he went to sleep with a breathing machine on his face. The first mask had eaten into his nose creating a sore that just would not heal, so he had to pay hundreds of dollars to get a different larger mask that covered most of his face. The sore took months to heal and left a noticeable scar.

One day, four years after his first minor issue, he got up and went out to repair a fence. It was rather simple manual work. Before this all started he did this kind of thing easily. Now he could barely gather the tools and supplies together. He made two slow trips to get the tools and supplies to the fence where it needed repairing. He spent hours to get the simple repair done that should have taken less than a half hour. Finally toward supper he came back into the yard, completely exhausted. He left his things for the next day to be put away and shed his jacket and boots as he came in and barely made it to his bed to lay down.

The next morning he woke up famished. His last meal was the morning the day before. He had not used his sleeping machine, he’d forgotten to take his medications. He felt better. He realized that while taking his medications and using the sleeping machine he felt ten times worse then he had with the first minor issue he went to the doctor to have dealt with years earlier. He stopped taking all the medications and using the sleeping machine.

Each day he felt noticeably better. A week later he went out to repair another area of the fence and it took him a half hour. Then he went online to the Mayo Clinic website and read about his first symptom, the medications he added each few months and their side effects. He realized that the first symptom could be dealt with by a change in diet and more exercise on a very regular basis. All the other symptoms were known side effects for the medications, each as they were added, at least for the first 4 drugs. Then it became clear to him he’d been on such a soup of drugs his body was completely incapable of dealing with all the powerful effects and side effects and it had started to slowly shut down.

His last comment finally caught my attention: he’d talked to a number of men who’d suffered the same thing. It was as if doctors were trying to incapacitate men with medications.

It took me a few months to realize the same thing had been done to me. I stopped taking all but the one medication I’d been on for decades that I needed for my GERDS. Life returned to normal and I started to realize I was also being abused and gaslit by my now ex.

As in the days of old, God gathered in this wandering sheep, carried me back to the flock, and saved my life, literally and figuratively. For this I give God thanks each day, and pray for those that tried to do me in, and still try to this day. May God gather them into the flock, as in the days of old.

Faith and one’s faith community is not a smorgasbord, any more than medications are a smorgasbord to pick and choose from. Traditions develop and continue because they provide a healthy manner of living. Humans continually mess up the traditions, and the traditions, at least my Lutheran Christian tradition, is well prepared to face such challenges and call us back to rely on …

to rely on God alone, and God’s Grace for us as the only thing that saves us. We need one thing, something like I needed only one medication. We require God’s Grace. Everything else only appears to provide us life abundant. In fact the ‘side effects’ of most religious self-made conglomerations is that one finds oneself out in the wilderness, defenceless as the wolves come closer and closer.

Thanks be to God, for God’s Grace, made known to us through Jesus’s old, old story.

As of old, God walks with us, and rejoices when we return to the flock after we inevitably stray into danger that could do us in. Our enemies, and God’s enemies, may want us dead and work hard to accomplish that, doch God works wonders to save us, and there is joy for us, because of God’s Grace, all the days of our lives.